[ACCount37]

And what are the limitations of the machines they run on?

We're yet to find any process at all that can't be computed with a Turing machine.

Why do you expect that "intelligence" is a sudden outlier? Do you have an actual reason to expect that?

[RandomLensman]

Is everything really just computation? Gravity is (or can be) the result of a Turing machine churning away somewhere?

[ACCount37]

It might be.

https://xkcd.com/505/

[keernan]

>We're yet to find any process at all that can't be computed with a Turing machine.

Life. Consciousness. A soul. Imagination. Reflection. Emotions.

[ACCount37]

Again: why can't any of that run on a sufficiently capable computer?

I can't help but perceive this as pseudo-profound bullshit. "Real soul and real imagination cannot run on a computer" is a canned "profound" statement with no substance to it whatsoever.

If a hunk of wet meat the size of a melon can do it, then why not a server rack full of nanofabricated silicon?

[keernan]

For the same reason you don't sit and talk with rocks. Nobody understands how it is that wet meat can do these things but rocks cannot. And a computer is a rock. As such, we have no idea whether all the hunks of wet meat in the world can figure out how to transform rocks into wet meat.

[ACCount37]

You don't?

Modern computers can understand natural language, and can reply in natural language. This isn't even particularly new, we've had voice assistants for over a decade. LLMs are just far better at it.

Again: I see no reason why silicon plates can't do the same exact things a mush of wet meat does. And recent advances in AI sure suggest that they can.